Elephants Make the Best Pets!

If you want to really enjoy the experience of having a companion animal, helpmate and best friend all rolled into one, you can’t do better than getting an elephant.

For starters, you will finally silence that neighbor’s yappy dog that keeps disrupting your weekday afternoon naps. Just an occasional full-trunked trumpet from your pachyderm pal, and that mutt will certainly think twice before making another yip.

And your new companion will fit right in, with its monochromatic hide blending quite well with that Euro-techno mélange of black, silver, white and grey that you’ve slathered across walls, ceilings and furnishings. Besides, having an elephant for a pet is like having your own circus! Imagine the fun you’ll have marking off three great rings in the back yard lawn, collecting several bucks a head for each by-passing stranger, and displaying your best ringmaster imitation to the rapt crowd. (All you’ll be missing is the calliope!)

Your elephantine friend will stick around. With a typical lifespan of from 50 to 70 years, your buddy will be by your side all the way to Sunny Dells Claustrophobic Condos for the World-Wearily Incontinent.

Enlist your large mammalian friend in the concoction of all sorts of wondrous culinary treats! Tortillas, fresh pressed olive oil, pancakes, flatbreads, pizzas, pie crusts — you’ll be fashioning them all in a mere fraction of the time with the aid of your ambulatory four-legged food press. (Also handy when you finally get around to placing the sand bed for that brick-paver patio you’ve been talking about for the last seven years.)

Say howdy to a howdah! Find yourself one of those fancy strap-aboard sedan chairs and essay your town from atop the rolling ponderous gait of your multi-ton beast. For good measure, be sure to also invest in a broad bamboo-handled fan — preferably of peacock feathers of iridescent blue.

Think how household chores will be simplified by your new housemate. Replacing the chandelier bulbs in the front foyer just got a lot easier, as did washing the oriel window above the garage door, and cleaning the gutters above the sloping back yard. Knocking over the occasional dead tree becomes a breeze, and should you have any large-scale logging to undertake, you’re covered there, too. Those stiff bristly hairs occasionally shed from your mammoth’s head, back and posterior make for a durable and efficient all-purpose scrub brush (provided they’ve been amply deodorized first, of course). And forget trying to drag out that old cracked and flattened hose from under the carcass of that defunct riding mower the next time you want to wash the car; just have ol’ hose-nose lend a hand (er. . . snout).

Unlike your malcontent siblings, demanding teenagers, loopy parents, and thoroughly annoying cousins, your big gray companion will never forget your birthday or anniversary or driver’s license renewal year! Or where you last left your car keys. Or which houseplant proves tastiest. Or what was the name of that boozy blond you got entirely too familiar with at the company Christmas party back in 1998. Or which cupboard contains the 80-pound sack of forage.

You’ll never fear strolling through the hyena-infested jungle grass ringing the Serengeti Plain again. You’ll no longer have to worry about your pet running free in the park and getting lost till long after dark. And imagine — after getting ticked off during the Thanksgiving feast — the sheer glee of stomping loudly around the dining table blowing off steam!

Tired of fighting through crowds to order a drink at the bar or to get in the queue for that hot new film premier? Trust me, your new mate will be quite adept at parting the mass of humanity for you.

And, hey, feeding your thick-skinned friend? — why, mere peanuts! And you can find many more exotic creatures at rickzworld.